Valorization of Dry Orange Peel Residues by Gasification Process

The growing need to reduce the environmental impact of the modern lifestyle imposes a continuous development of novel technologies aimed at a severe reduction of pollutant emissions in order to ensure a tolerable quality of life in metropolitan areas. Among potential alternatives, particular attention has been recently addressed toward the exploitation of residual biomass and wastes as sources for syngas production by thermo-chemical processes for heat and power production. Fruits processing industries generate important amount of residues, which must be managed properly by recycling, incineration or land filling. Due to the high carbon content, these residues represent a significant source of energy that could be valorized by gasification processes. Hence, our attention was focused on the energy recovery from orange peels residues produced by a Sicilian agro-industrial company by steam gasification. Thermodynamic and experimental analysis were carried out. Experiments were performed in a fixed bed laboratory scale reactor working with catalytic materials (Ni/Al2O3, MgO and dolomite mineral) with the biomass in order to investigate the influence of experimental conditions on the outlet stream compositions, mainly in terms of hydrogen content of the produced syngas. Results were compared to thermodynamic data in order to gain information of the experimental method used. The results have confirmed successfully the experimental results compared with the simulation data. The highest concentration (65.9%) of hydrogen volume in the syngas mixture was reached with dolomite mineral as catalyst.